Museums In A Global Context Analysis

2. Theoretical context
“There is no escape from the politics of our knowledge.”
This chapter will focus on state of the art theory regarding museums in a global perspective, but also museums in a post-Apartheid context. A number of concepts have already been mentioned that warrant explicit explanation due to the nature of the terms. The concept of ‘museum’, ‘heritage’, ‘community’ and ‘identity’ are broad enough to warrant explanation within the context of this paper. These concepts have been unpacked in different ways in relation to different theories. The chapter will start of broad, before zooming into specific South African issues in regards to the above terms.

2.1. Museums in a global context
The International Council of Museums (ICOM)
This is also the official South African government advice for museums in South Africa. However, the need for museums to become more community orientated is a global trend in museums. What is meant by a community has often proved elusive and most often the only thing the various definitions have in common is that it deals with people. Most often in this thesis community is used as noun to describe any collective of people from the same geographic space. The definition of community depends on the specificity of the context, but should be considered as ‘thick’ or ‘thin’ attachments of people. Beier-de Haan uses this understanding of sociologist Gerard Delanty to consider museums and community. Instead thus of looking at a community as inclusive or exclusive, it looks at the community as an attachment of people that can deeply rooted or not. An individual’s relationship with a community may be fleeting or long term, it may be in thought or in action, it might be globally or locally. For example, museums can be spaces for highly committed individuals to visit and work or curious passer-by. In the end both form the ongoing community of a
The community becomes important when the formation of identity takes place as an opposition to what South Africa has known its museums to be in the past. In the 20th century social exclusion might not have bene deliberate, according Peter Davis, but in South Africa it definitely was. It is often cited that museums in South Africa must become people focused as opposed to object focus to truly integrate with the community, according to the conglomerate of authors Mpumlwana et al. Mpumlwana et al consists of several authors following a ‘fast track’ university credential programme in order for them to partake in South Africa’s culture exchange. This programme and stance highlights the importance of the inclusion of people, their needs, ideas and feelings above the museums traditional role of, amongst others, displaying objects. This translates to; if museums objects are offensive to the people, they have no right to be in the museum. Regardless of the narrative the museum places the object in. This stance is in direct opposition of the museums traditional task of collecting, preserving and presenting objects. This stance allows for the burying of tainted objects in repositories, but also removing or destroying offensive cultural objects from public display. This serves for a number of controversies in South Africa. Museums of South Africa have